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Identified patient
Identified patient, or "IP", is a term used in a clinical setting to describe the person in a dysfunctional family who has been subconsciously (or unconsciously) selected to act out the family's inner conflicts as a diversion; who is the split-off carrier of the (perhaps transgenerational) family disturbance.Peter L. Rudnytsky, Reading Psychoanalysis (2002) p. 44 The term is also used in the context of organizational management, in circumstances where an individual becomes the carrier of a group problem.Identified Patient Pattern Origins and characteristics The term emerged from the work of the Bateson Project on family homeostasis, as a way of identifying a largely unconscious pattern of behavior whereby an excess of painful feelings in a family lead to one member being identified as the cause of all the difficulties - a scapegoating of the IP.Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Families and how to survive them (London 1994) p. 103 The identified patient - also called the "symptom-bearer" or "presenting problem" - may display unexplainable emotional or physical symptoms, and is often the first person to seek help, perhaps at the request of the family."Dysfunctional family", Encyclopedia of Psychology, April 6, 2001, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g2699/is_0004/ai_2699000448/ However, while family members will typically express concern over the IP's problems, they may instinctively react to any improvement on the identified patient's part by attempting to reinstate the status quo.Cooper, p. 17 Virginia Satir viewed the identified patient as a way of both concealing and revealing a family's secret agendas.Sara E. Cooper, The Ties that Bind (2004) p. 17 Conjoint family therapy stressed accordingly the importance in group therapy of bringing not only the identified patient but the extended family in which their problems arose into the therapyEric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Penguin 1976) p. 295 - with the ultimate goal of relieving the IP of the broader family feelings they have been carrying.Skynner/Cleese, Families p. 104 In such circumstances, not only the IP but their siblings as well may end up feeling the benefits.Berne, p. 295 R. D. Laing saw the IP as a function of the family nexus: "the person who gets diagnosed is part of a wider network of extremely disturbed and disturbing patterns of communication".R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (Penguin 1984) p. 94 Later formulations suggest that the patient may be an 'emissary' of sorts from the family to the wider world, in an implicit familial call for help,S. H. Buckman/A. S. Gurman, Theory and Practice of Brief Therapy (2002) p. 93 as with the reading of juvenile delinquency as a coded cry for help by a child on his parents' behalf.T. Pitt-Aikens/A. T. Ellis, Loss of the Good Authority (London 1989) p. 89, p. 118, and p. 185-6 There may then be an element of altruism in the IP's behavior - playing sick to prevent worse things happening in the family, such as a total family breakdown.Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Life and how to survive it (London 1994) p. 38 Examples * In a family where the parents need to assert themselves as powerful figures and caretakers, often due to their own insecurities, they may designate one or more of their children as being inadequate, subconsciously assigning to the child the role of someone who cannot cope by themselves. For example, the child may exhibit some irrational problem that requires the constant care and attention of the parents. * In Dibs, an account of a child therapy, Virginia Axline considered that perhaps the parents, "quite unconsciously...chose to see Dibs as a mental defective rather than as an intensified personification of their own emotional and social inadequacy".Virginia Axline, Dibs In Search of Self (Penguin 1975) page 80 * A child may be regarded as a bully and a troublemaker in school and labeled a "problem child," when he may in fact be expressing conflicts and problems, such as abuse from home, by acting out and being "bad." * Gregory Bateson considered that sometimes "the identified patient sacrifices himself to maintain the sacred illusion that what the parent says makes sense", and that "the identified patient exhibits behavior which is almost a caricature of that loss of identity which is characteristic of all the family members".Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) p. 237 and p. 243 Jung Jung independently concluded that a neurosis "comes from the totality of a man's life...from his psychic experience within the family or even his social group",Quoted in David Sedgwick, Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy (London 2006) p. 63 and saw himself as something of a case in point: "I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors...an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children".C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (London 1983) p. 260 Criticism 'The anti-psychiatry movement of the Sixties...proposed the theory that it was families that were mad rather than simply the individuals who were scapegoated by them as the "sick member"',Jenny Diski, The Sixties (London 2009) p. 126 thereby extending the original boundaries of the IP concept. 'From this position, it was a short hop, given the ethos of the Sixties, to doubting the normality of normality itself...the mad were the super-sane'.Diski, p. 126-8 Laing might insist overtly that it is 'not necessarily the case that the person who is "out of formation" is more "on course" than the formation. There is no need to idealize someone just because he is labelled "out of formation"'.Laing, p. 98 In practice, however, he and his followers tended to claim that 'more often than not, a person diagnosed as "mentally ill" is the emotional scapegoat for the turmoil in his or her family or associates, and may, in fact, be the "sanest" member of this group...the least disturbed member of the entire group'.Mary Barnes and Joseph Berke, Mary Barnes Penguin 1974) p. 84 and p. 91 Later family therapists would insist by contrast that 'you mustn't take anyone's side....That's why I believe the ideas of R. D. Laing and Cooper have done a lot of harm. It's natural, from an emotional point of view, to side with the scapegoat, but...it doesn't work. Supporting only the scapegoat makes the rest of the family less secure, more paranoid, even less able to "own" their bad feelings'.Robin Skynner/John Cleese, Families and how to survive them (London 1994) p. 106 See also References Further reading * Patterson, JoEllen (1998). Essential skills in family therapy: from the first interview to termination‎. The Guilford Press. ISBN 1-57230-307-7 Category:Family Category:Parenting Category:Patients Category:Psychoanalysis Category:Family therapy Category:Interpersonal relationships